need a moose for your wall? the Bailey's do!

Teresa Duryea Wong. Moose Bailey. 38 x 31 inches. Cotton. Machine quilted. 2018.

Fourteen months ago, some friends of ours commissioned me to make an art quilt for them. Today I finally finished it!

Our friends had seen two quilts of mine (pictured below - the zebras and Holy Cow) in our home, and they looked at them closely and said they wanted something like this for their house. I didn't pay too much attention to the comment, I though they were just being nice.

Turns out, they really did want an original art quilt. So we talked about ideas and color schemes. We settled on a moose! I enlarged the image in black and white to the size I wanted the finished quilt to be. Next, I covered the image with tracing paper and used the photo as a guide and traced shapes that followed the contour of the moose. I ended up changing the image I traced to smooth out edges, etc. and make it work better for a textile.

The image below shows the photograph with tracing paper placed over it. Kind of hard to see, but the pencil marks are how I made the applique shapes.

Next I covered a natural colored cotton with Misty Fuse and got ready to applique. I pulled about two hundred fabrics in the colors I wanted. Then I used a light table to trace the shapes onto freezer paper. I ironed the freezer paper on the fabric and cut them out, then fused them to the cotton shape --- using the traced image as a guide for placement. This applique is raw edge.

It was quite fun to make this one. Our friends want to have it framed... so that is the next step.

I have only done one other commission, and it was a quilt for a kid's room. I really enjoyed making this moose. His name is: Moose Bailey.

Thanks Bailey's for your patience and more importantly, for your trust in me to make something for your beautiful home!